Right now they're at the level just below us, but they'll fall away again soon enough.
This was posted about Everton on RAWK. Crazy, I know, but it makes a lot of sense:
Firstly, in terms of their actual revenue, you can get the annual reports on line for the last few years, they make interesting reading (just google it - the swiss ramble blog spot also does good analysis on their accounts). Essentially the picture they show is a team earning about 75% of its income from TV rights. Last year their total revenue was approx. £120m, of which £88-90m came from TV rights. It's a terribly unhealthy balance (by comparison Liverpool earns about 40% of its revenue from broadcasting). It also means that if they did invest in a stadium, it probably wouldn't have the expected income impact they are hoping for (since, as others have noted their commercial operations only account for £10m and their ticket sales for about £20m). Why is that? Well, largely because they are an unsuccessful mid-tier side that hasn't won a cup in years, so no one wants to invest in them.
What that means from an Everton perspective is that their opportunity for expansion is massively limited. Why spend a £150m on a new stadium if the expected return is so paltry? What's the point in chasing commercial opportunities, if the money here is so little? The club is stasis, structurally, moribund and stagnant, but that actually stems from what Everton are truly successful at, which is remaining in the top tier. Let me explain why not getting relegated can actually be bad for a team.
Look at the premiership table. Read the names of the clubs and think about them for a bit. What you have is a handful oif clubs that are huge financial successes; United, city, Chel53a, Ar5ena1, Liverpool, Spurs. These are all teams that have significant advantages either in terms of recent trophy success, a large global fanbase, sugar daddies or are based in the rich heartland of London. These clubs have enormous opportunities to rack up the cash from TV, advertising, commercial activities, etc. Take Liverpool as an example, they went to Australia for a pre-season a few years back and played to full houses of Liverpool fans in 90,000 seater stadiums. Those handful of pre-season games alone were worth millions to the club.
The vast bulk of the rest of the teams in the premiership are yo-yo sides that come up and go back down again routinely. Leiceste, Palace, Swansea, Norwich, West Ham, Watford, Saudi Sportswashing Machine, Stoke, Southampton, Sunderland, West Brom are all repeat offenders that have been relegated from and promoted back to the premiership in the last decade (Bournemouth are also the newbies that are looking to get into yo-yoing). Only Everton and Villa have cobnsistently remained in the premiership and its no conicidence that they struggle because of this.
When a team is relegated it's a shock to the system, it forces them to restructure like crazy, as expensive players and management teams go out the window. Some never recover from this (Leeds, Coventry) others use it as an opportunity to revitalise the club (like Southampton for example). Of course, it helps that they already have the natural advantages that got them to the PL in the first place. One of the key things it does for a club is it forces them to streamline their operating costs.
Everton and Villa can't do this. For years now they have been unable to compete with the big boys but have been forced to pay PL wages and prices to players just to stay in the division. All of their spending goes on developing players for sale, or acquiring players to stay up. They can't improve because it costs too much and their is no incentive to improve incrementally because the top tier sides just keep getting further and further away. The only way the club grows is when the TV money goes up. Compare their lot to Southampton, who went down, but kept their support base. They lost the crippling wage bill and were able to restructure as well as develop an academy system that is the envy of the league. They came back up, made a big splash for a small budget - and immediately all their best players were bought as they were plundered by the top sides. They are struggling this season and who is to say they won't go back down? But they will go back down with a heap of cash and the opportunity to develop even more players out of their academy.
I'm not saying Everton would be better off going down, but as of now they need a game changer... either a sugar daddy, or a spell in the Championship. The alternative is to be perpetually squeezed to the margins and eventually to fall down the sinkhole when it becomes no longer bearable. For the last few years they have got by with a cleverly assembled squad of hard-working pros, but now that team is old and needs replacing, but there is no money to do so, the stadium is dilapidated, but their ios no money to fix that either, they have sold everything they can sell (includingt eh raining ground, the catering license etc.) the recent TV deal for them is not a boon, it's a stay of execution. In general their future is bleak, but that's true of all the teams on the margins, they are all being squeezed by the insatiable demands of the top table and the stupid influx of petrodollars that have effectively destroyed the league.
